THERE are just 41 weeks between Sarah Loughrie’s youngest two children.

Little Laci was born in June 2013, her wee brother the following May and their mum was instantly struck by the similarities between the pair.

She smiled: “Josh looks so like Laci. It’s her big lips – we said they were Angelina Jolie lips. Neither of my other girls have them, then when Josh was born that was the first thing we noticed. He has the same nose too. I sometimes try to imagine what they would have been like together.”

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Imagining them together is all Sarah, of Gorebridge, Midlothian, can do because Laci died when she was just two days old. She was born with a twisted small intestine, which meant most of her bowel was dead. Docs at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Edinburgh operated but couldn’t save her. Laci would have turned three on June 26, a date Sarah finds difficult.

She said: “I never know how to celebrate Laci’s birthday. Some people who have lost a baby have birthday cakes for them, others ignore the day. Nothing seems right for me. A birthday should be a happy day and I have the day she died to be sad. So instead I thought I’d jump out of a plane.”

A sky-dive at St Andrews Airfield will be the start of a tradition for Sarah to try a challenge that terrifies her on her daughter’s birthday.

She said: “And this does scare me. I mean, I can’t even climb ladders. But it will be a nice memory to look back on for her birthday.”

It also gives Sarah a chance to raise money for the charity which she credits with bringing her back from the brink, SANDS Lothians.

She said: “I had a breakdown when Josh was 10 months old. I was in bits, I couldn’t cope. I fell pregnant 12 weeks after I had Laci and never had the chance to grieve. That’s when I got in touch with SANDS. When your baby dies, you think you are the only person who understands your grief but when you come here, they get you.”

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Now after counselling, Sarah, who couldn’t face leaving the house for weeks after Laci died, has regained some of her confidence.

She’s applied for a job and has given a talk to a group of doulas on dealing with families who have a loss. They are the latest steps in her journey to bring something positive out of her loss of her “wee surprise”.

She said: “My girls were seven and 10 when I had Laci. She was a lovely surprise, I was over the moon to be pregnant.”

In fact, life was only getting back to normal for Sarah, who had injured her back in a car crash on Halloween 2010, forcing her to give up her nursing studies at Napier University just six months short of graduating.

She said: “By then I had got a job and things were good. When you have two healthy kids, you take it all for granted.”

Sarah's daughter Laci would have been three in June but she died when she was just two days old.

But at just over 37 weeks, the baby stopped moving. Sarah drove herself to the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, convinced the movements would start again as soon as she got there. But in fact the baby’s heartbeat was very high and when Laci was delivered five and a half hours later, she wasn’t breathing.

Sarah said: “But they resuscitated her and handed me this perfect wee baby.”

But up on the ward, a midwife spotted something amiss and took Laci away.Within hours, she was in the Sick Kids hospital in Edinburgh and a consultant was explaining she had intestinal gut malrotation – her small intestine had attached back to front and was twisted. Ninety per cent of her bowel was dead. Docs removed the gut and untwisted it and said they would operate again the next day, but gave the family a stark choice.

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Sarah said: “Even if it was a success she would be kept alive by machines, she wouldn’t live past 10, she would never eat or drink, she would be in continual pain, she would get infection after infection and she would never see life outside the four walls of the hospital.

“We could let her go or keep her alive.”

In the end the family were spared such a decision as Laci’s condition deteriorated after a second operation the next day when they were told they would have to say goodbye.

Sarah said: “We had a day and a night with her and the girls. We got a play therapist in, who did hand and footprints, we cuddled her, we took photos, we got her christened.

SARAH LOUGHRIE FROM GOREBRIDGE NEAR EDINBURGH.SARAH LOST HER BABY DAUGHTER WHO ONLY SURVIVED A FEW DAYS AFTER BIRTH AND NOW RAISES MONEY FOR THE CHARITY STILLBIRTH NEONATAL DEATH.SHE WILL BE SKYDIVING ON HER DAUGHTERS BIRTHDAY NEXT MONTH TO RAISE MORE FUNDS.PICTURED WITH LEFT DAUGHTER CERYS,RIGHT DAUGHTER MAIA. DATE 16/05/16.

“Close friends and family came in to meet her. Just after 6am I woke up and I could hear cars driving past and thought, ‘that’s people driving to work, their day is normal and my life changes today’. It felt really surreal.”

At 2pm, as they were making handprints one of the wires from her machine slipped and began beeping.

Sarah said: “There was nothing wrong but I felt it was her telling us she was ready to go.”

Twenty minutes later they turned off the machines which were keeping her alive.

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She said: “They said we would get half an hour to an hour of her breathing on her own before she passed but she lived for eight and half hours on her own with only her pain relief. Everyone was coming in to see this wee girl who was still there.

“When she died we took her through to a private room in a moses basket. Her grandad stayed in the hospital that night so she wouldn’t be on her own. I can’t remember going home. I remember going through the doors and screaming and collapsing.”

After Laci’s funeral two weeks later, Sarah discovered trying to get back to normal was impossible, not least because of other people’s reactions. Her elder daughter was picked on and when Sarah finally plucked up courage to go out, many people avoided her.

Sarah pictured with children Maia, Cerys and Josh.

She said: “You feel like saying, ‘you’re not going to catch my grief’. No one wants to talk about a baby who’s died. They don’t want to say something they think will make it worse but there is nothing they can say that will make it worse.”

Nicola Welsh, chief executive of SANDS Lothians, said: “Anniversaries are incredibly difficult for parents. Parents often ask us how they can get through this day and everyone is different in how they choose to remember.

“Many families release balloons, some visit the cemetery, others bake a cake but not so many jump out a plane.